[Certain]

ZYG: You're a strange guy. This verse is very much your own. It's very original and clear and both is directly about the topic and expands on it. There are some issues, though, not that these will be unfamiliar to you. Your rhymes are rather weak, and your diction is a bit clumsy anyway at times. Repeated words (beyond "said") litter this, and while I understand the goal was to create a very natural progression, seeing "net" twice in eight words or ending three consecutive lines with "me" also is distracting. But what I found was that every read drew me to the verse more. The content is ridiculously creative, and I really liked the way it ended with an important and instructive moral. The fox followed the rules of the animal kingdom, while the woman was more concerned with civic temperment. I didn't ever develop any kind of emotional attachment to the characters, yet I still was interested to see how everything turned out. This story line, with cleaner writing, could have been ripped from Aesop's Fables. So I commend your originality but still would like to see you use your capable grasp of mechanics on a storytelling verse.

Mordycai: Yes, this topic was difficult. But your approach was lame. Treating the art as art is a copout in itself, but to then to end like was a bigger disappointment. The whole meta-commentary on a topic is not original or fresh. I've read at least 20 of these endings in the last 12 years. Sometimes, with the right setup, it can work. But here you actually half-told a story that would have incorporated the topic, then you decided you didn't want to go any further and abandoned ship. So let's talk about the writing. It was a bit up and down. You made quite a few noticeable typos, which slowed me down as a reader. I thought the first six lines were an OK setup. Clearer imagery to set the scene would have been nice, as why they were in an auditorium was a bit confusing. I never really got a good mental image of what this place looked like. Your rhymes were a bit forced througout, but it wasn't anything horrendous, and ZYG also struggled at points with clean diction. But where I think your verse succeded most was the quote from Julie about why she liked the art. I think you could have taken that little rant and turned it into a pretty solid 20-line verse, outside of the whole scene in the art gallery, and come away with a pretty big upset. Instead you seemed frustrated by a lack of ideas even though you had ideas.

Vote: ZYG